Fernando, Numbers, used in proper scientific method could indeed be described as "Numbers are the Universal language offered by the deity to humans as confirmation of the truth." is a loose sense...

In more modern parlance, we could say that mathematics is used to build models to describe many patterns that underpin the universe. For example we can use maths to work out acceleration due to gravity, or to determine the forces acting on a structure we build.

The "numerology" mumbo-jumbo is to mathematics what astrology is to astronomy.

Here is the obvious difference: when I say that the angles of a triangle (drawn on a flat surface) always add to 180 degrees, I can provide proof, and I can verify this by measuring any triangle produced. Hence the assertion that the angle sum of a triangle is 180 degrees is not dependent on any holy book or other authority, nor has any exceptions.

By contrast "numerology" very much depends on authority and its assertions, as Matt has shown, does not consistently work, and sometimes are just plain silly, and therefore does not constitute a scientific way to use maths.

Numerology has been around on the sidelines of many religions, notably also in Judaism, where is was known as the "kabala". It has never been part of official teachings in either Judaism nor Christianity, it has always been a quirky sideline. What is worth noting, that this stuff has been on the decline for a long time and has been pretty much forgotten about in both of these religions since the late middle ages, and consigned to the dustbin of history. In fact, the early church had quite a few struggles with, and determined pronouncements on issues to do with practices related to magic.

This is in contrast to Islam, where the same practice, long since discredited, is enjoying a growth in followers. It says something about Islam, that it needs lame parlour tricks to "prove" to the gullible the "divine origin" of the Qur'an. It also is a tacit admission that the plain words of the Qur'an are inadequate for that purpose, in fact more of a hindrance, as anyone actually reading it cannot help but to be repulsed by it.

manfred wrote:It says something about Islam, that it needs lame parlour tricks to "prove" to the gullible the "divine origin" of the Qur'an. It also is a tacit admission that the plain words of the Qur'an are inadequate for that purpose, in fact more of a hindrance, as anyone actually reading it cannot help but to be repulsed by it.

I am not quite sure I understand your question, but let me just say that I do understand the counts of the Arabic letters used in Rashad Khalifa's numerology very well - I spent years verifying every letter, and every claim made. I am well aware of the arguments, and their flaws. The entire counterargument is much too long to go into in a forum post - and this is why I published a book on this very thing - so naturally I cannot cover everything, but here are a few problems with the so-called "miraculous letters:"

1) The verses that are initialed are translated in a deceptive way. For example, we have the below:

However, there is no indication in the Arabic grammar that this verse at all refers to the letters. In fact, notice how Dr. Khalifa had to insert parentheses to explain what his interpretation was? Nearly every Muslim scholar in the world (who know Arabic much better than I) agree that the statements after the letters refer to the verses of the Quran itself, because it is the Quran that was Muhammad's miracle.

2) The way each letter is counted is arbitrary. For example, Arabic does not allow certain double letter combinations - such as two Alefs or two Yas in succession. To take the place of this double letter, a Hamza is inserted.

When counting the letters, the Submitters count every Alef with a Hamza as a double Alef to reach their counts. They say "this is the rule in Arabic - this is a double Alef."

However, when counting Yas with a Hamza, they count this as a single Ya (see, for example, verse 36:18, which has a double Ya but is only counted as a single Ya in official counts). They say "this is because the other letter is a Hamza, so even though it is technically a double Ya, we only need to count it once!"

Can you see how silly this is? Some might even go so far as to say deceptive?

As another example of arbitrary counting, to reach a multiple of 19, you must sum up the counts of every Ha and Mim in the chapters initialed with these letters AND exclude every other chapter that contains Ha and Mim in their groups, even though there is a common letter. However, in order to reach a multiple of 19 with the initial Saad (on chapter 38), we must combine this with all of the other counts from chapters containing Saad in their initial group (even though none of these initial groups match, they just share one common letter). This is not a consistent method of counting, and destroys any statistical significance found. Unless EVERY chapter is counted the same exact way, there is no claim that can be made. There is nothing logical or mathematical in changing your method of calculation in the middle of a calculation in order to reach a conclusion.

3) I wrote an entire, fake, holy text where I was easily able to replicate (and surpass) the letter counts (as well as every other claimed miracle related to this code). If it was so miraculous, how could a mere human imitate it?

4) This is probably the most important point: The letter counts, and the claims made about them, are manipulated.

Dr. Khalifa counted the letters wrong, plain and simple. The Submitters openly admit this, and as a result they had to perform a recount in 2002 due to many mistakes being made. They say that "there weren't THAT many errors" and that errors were only found with two letters. What they fail to mention is that the two letters that they found mistaken counts on are the two most common Quranic initials (Alef and Lam). They also fail to mention that to make something a multiple of nineteen, one needs to make a maximum of nine additions or subtractions, at most. This follows from complex number theory, but it is very easily verified: Pick ANY random, whole number and I guarantee you that you need to at most subtract or add nine to make it a multiple of 19.

What this meant for the Submitters was they had to compare multiple copies of the Quran, then pick-and-choose what letters they needed to add and subtract from a combination of different readings in order to "make the code work." This was not done in any scientific way (even though it was claimed that it was - their method was very flawed, and not at all scientific. Instead, they made the evidence fit their conclusion, instead of the other way around). They state that "we only had to make a couple of changes, so Dr. Khalifa's counts were ALMOST right..." but here's the thing: A "couple" of changes is very significant, when you consider at most nine needed to be made to "expose the miraculous code."

To show you an example of this deceptive manipulation, the Submitters stated that the Syrian reading of the Quran was the "least corrupted" that they could find (i.e., it conformed to the code the most), and so they made most of their selections from this reading. In verse 2:2, the Syrian reading had this word:

ذٰلِكَ

While the edition the Submitters used originally had an extra Alef in their spelling of the word:

ذَٲلِكَ

The Submitters decided to change their spelling. However, in verse 13:3, the Syrian Quran has رَوَٲسِىَ while the Submitters decided to stick with their original spelling of رَوٰسِىَ . Why? Because if they remained consistent in their changes, this would violate the expectation that the letters will appear in multiples of 19. This is NOT my claim, but this is taken directly from the "scientific standards" set by the Submitters while doing their recount / editing. It is said that this Miracle prevents the Quran from being tampered with because any change will immediately cause many multiples of 19 to disappear. Therefore, they specifically set out to alter the Quran to cause the MOST multiples of 19 to appear, under the guise of preserving the original text... however, this is, as I said above, modifying the evidence to fit a conclusion - in other words, this is termed "fraud."

I hope this helped clarify my points. I know that it is difficult to have your beliefs questioned, and can be even harder to accept that you might have been deceived, but I ask you to please examine the facts. The so-called "miraculous letter counts" are nothing more than smoke and mirrors.

I don't buy Rashad Khalifa's numerology as the Mathematical Miracle of the Quran.

Sam, before the use of the Hindu numerals and the introduction of place value (the number system we now commonly use, sometimes inaccurately called the "Arabic" system) all the old cultures round the Mediterranean used letters to also symbolise numbers, and the Arab assignment you mention follows closely the Hebrew one. (The Greeks also used their alphabet in much the same way, as did the Romans).

The problem with such a system is that it makes calculations very difficult. You cannot have a "paper method" for even adding up, and in fact in the middle ages people commonly used an abacus to do sums.

The modern number system was introduced to Europe by Leonardo of Pisa in the twelfth century, who studied for a while in Tetouan, Morocco, where he learnt about the "Arabic" number system, which in turn had been brought into the Arab world from India.

Because it had a place value, i.e. the digit "1" could be 1, 10, 100 or any power of 10, depending on where is was put you could add up columns of numbers, for example, without an abacus.

The old "letter" representation of numbers was soon replaced by the better one, because you could work with it much better.

Also, not all cultures use a "base 10" counting system like we do. In many South American cultures it was base 20. In ancient Babylon they used base 60, with a sub-base of 10. We still have remnants of that old system in the way we deal with time and with angles for example. It really was very neat, and the ancient Babylonians are the ones who invented place value. Compared to our system, it is little more tricky to first get your head around, but is makes many operations with common fractions very much simpler.

‘Hindus and Muslims belong to two different religious philosophies, social customs and literary traditions. They neither intermarry nor eat together, and indeed they belong to two different civilisations which are based mainly on conflicting ideas and conceptions.’ Muhammad Ali Jinnah

The modern number system was introduced to Europe by Leonardo of Pisa in the twelfth century, who studied for a while in Tetouan, Morocco, where he learnt about the "Arabic" number system, which in turn had been brought into the Arab world from India

In ancient Babylon they used base 60, with a sub-base of 10. We still have remnants of that old system in the way we deal with time and with angles for example. It really was very neat, and the ancient Babylonians are the ones who invented place value. Compared to our system, it is little more tricky to first get your head around, but is makes many operations with common fractions very much simpler

.

There is said to exist archaeological evidence which shows the use of algebra during Gupta period,the golden period of Hindu rule around 5th century A.D.Did something similar exist in Semitic Babylon?I am asking because I have read HPyroli say that the urban town planning of Indus valley of around 5000 B.C to 1500 B.C in the subcontinent is not more superb than that of the Semitic civilisation of Babylon and that the Semitic Phoenician Carthage had many 9 storeyed buildings something that did not exist in ancient India to the best of what I know.

If special status could be granted to many states in India based on backwardness, then it can also be granted to remnant A. P which was deliberately rendered backward due to malicious policy of divide and rule.After division,percapita income of Telangana is Rs 20,000 /-more than that of remnant A.P.

The conquistadors who conquered South America were said to have been awed by the immense buildings built by native Americans.In medieval Christendom,according to some,the classical Roman knowledge of building immense long lasting structures was lost so much that big buildings did not survive for long periods it seems.However while the Conquistadors lacked the knowledge of building immense stone walls and buildings with precision,what they had was iron age guns with gun powder invented in China.No doubt that technology proved out to be more useful than that of bronze and stone age weapons of native Amerindians.

If special status could be granted to many states in India based on backwardness, then it can also be granted to remnant A. P which was deliberately rendered backward due to malicious policy of divide and rule.After division,percapita income of Telangana is Rs 20,000 /-more than that of remnant A.P.

There is said to exist archaeological evidence which shows the use of algebra during Gupta period,the golden period of Hindu rule around 5th century A.D.Did something similar exist in Semitic Babylon?

Algebra in the modern sense was first formally discussed by the Persian Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi in the eighth century. His name is is origin of our term "algorithm".

However, he did not "invent algebra". He had access to mostly Hindu sources, some of which interestingly repeat ideas also found in Babylon, so the there have been some cultural exchange.

Babylonian mathematics was mostly concerned with measurement and not so much with algebra, but there is some, for example, we have some cuneiform tablets in the British Museum, which have puzzles on the them rather lithe this one: "I have added the area of my square to its side length. I have 42. Tell me then the measure of my square."

This is then translated into something very much like a quadratic equation and solved systematically, with an algorithm, rather than by trial and error. The method is essentially what we would call "completing the square", and the Square root step at the end is done using square root tables.

The instructions go like this: how many lengths did I add? 1Half that and square it. half of 1 = 1/2 and 1/2 squared = 1/4Add that to the result. 42+ 1/4 = 42 1/4Look up this value in the square root table.(You will find 6 1/2)

Deduct from this half the number of length I added.

1 length added, half of 1 = 1/2 and 6 1/2 - 1/2 = 6

So the final answer is 6.

There are several like that, in what appears to be an teaching introduction to quadratics.

Given we have some algebra topics like that, the Babylonians sure would also have had knowledge of more basic algebra. but to date we do not have no archaeological data on that. We do know though that they were familiar with Pythagoras theorem (long before Pythagoras was born) and they used the same square root tables to solve triangles.

The Babylonian era had come to pretty much an end by the Gupta period you mention. The tablets I mention date from about 1700 BC, pre-dating the Hebrew bible by at least 500 years.

However, he did not "invent algebra". He had access to mostly Hindu sources, some of which interestingly repeat ideas also found in Babylon, so the there have been some cultural exchange.

Now did the Hindu sources improve in any way upon the mathematical ideas of Babylon.I know that Hindu temple construction involves a lot of knowledge of geometry but Hindu geometry is said to have been the result of contact with the Hellenes or Greeks or the Bactrian kingdom post invasions of Alexander around 300B.C to 200 B.C.

Also have you got any idea as to going by which parameters the urban dwellings of Babylon were considered superior to that of the Indus Valley.Priests occupy an important position in both the Babylonian and Hindu societies and were gatekeepers of knowledge.So might be all of the knowledge or know how might not have been transferred.

If special status could be granted to many states in India based on backwardness, then it can also be granted to remnant A. P which was deliberately rendered backward due to malicious policy of divide and rule.After division,percapita income of Telangana is Rs 20,000 /-more than that of remnant A.P.

Now did the Hindu sources improve in any way upon the mathematical ideas of Babylon.

One the whole I would say yes. First, classical Hindu mathematics is broader in scope. For example we have discussions on many varied topics in geometry , including three dimensional use of Pythagoras, something not (yet?) found in Babylonian texts. We also have work on number theory, such as a description of what is a irrational number. We find for example some detailed discussion of root 2, pointing out that it cannot be perfectly evaluated, and it is a number that is neither even nor odd.

To the Babylonians, root 2 was calculated to some degree of accuracy and assumed to be good enough.

I know about the gematrical values of the letters, as this is part of the Mathematical Miracle, but I don't know about these values being tied to astronomy, no. I know what Rashad Khalifa claimed about these letters, because that is what I studied.

MattS wrote:, this is a challenge issued by God saying “no one can ever replicate the intricate mathematics that I have interlaced into the Quran.” In my book, I have a chapter dedicated to a fake holy text that I wrote. It is ten chapters long, and within it are 361 (19x19) verses. It is a completely coherent text, with religious laws and duties spelled out (all made up of course), written in verse (just like the Quran), and has 282 multiples of 19 within it that imitate the ones found in the Quran both in form and content. To put this into perspective, my book has 361 verses and 282 facts

MattS wrote:, this is a challenge issued by God saying “no one can ever replicate the intricate mathematics that I have interlaced into the Quran.” In my book, I have a chapter dedicated to a fake holy text that I wrote. It is ten chapters long, and within it are 361 (19x19) verses. It is a completely coherent text, with religious laws and duties spelled out (all made up of course), written in verse (just like the Quran), and has 282 multiples of 19 within it that imitate the ones found in the Quran both in form and content. To put this into perspective, my book has 361 verses and 282 facts

Alexmencorn wrote:Id say the language of creation and order is mathematics, but the language of G-d is not discernible to us. Math, with all its grandeur and expansiveness, still has not explained the most basic of relationships, that which relates the soul to the physical body. Indeed, it cannot quantify the soul at all.

Do the postulations of metaphysics explains the relationship of the soul to the physical body?Why in the Bhagavat Gita they say that the soul is made of Godly matter that cannot be defined..They define it as Godly matter and once again say it cannot be defined.Once again there is a description of God and individual souls as one largest and brightest lights and several little lights respectively.These little lights called individual souls are said to have emanated out of that largest light called God and their final destination is supposed to be to merge back into that brightest soul after necessary purification in consecutive births.That is defined as moksha or salvation per some theologians.

Now the irony is that the undefinable Godly matter called individual soul is once again being described/defined as being a little light.So even metaphysics cannot clearly explain what exactly one means by a soul.

If special status could be granted to many states in India based on backwardness, then it can also be granted to remnant A. P which was deliberately rendered backward due to malicious policy of divide and rule.After division,percapita income of Telangana is Rs 20,000 /-more than that of remnant A.P.

where is the letter "P".? It does not exist in Arabic alphabet. The very reason Farsi language had to add it to their own..Like everything else. Islam copied or plagiarizes its numerical values from Jews, Christians or Hindus.Here is example:Cardinal Values

SAM, this is exactly the reason why numerology is nonsense. Thank you demonstrating the faulty thought pattern clearly. If facts do not match the pattern, make up new facts or use unrelated facts. Rashad Khalifa was an Egyptian and did not know Bahasa at all. He would not have known what to make of the new letters in Jawi script, the p, the ng and the sy, he would find the use of some other letters weird too.

So, for the start, SAM, the Qur'an was not written in Jawi script, nor in Bahasa or Javanese. In fact, SAM, the oldest copies of the Qur'an where not even written in Arabic script...